Hi all,
I have been using Time Machine for many years. When I go away I power down my Mac and take the disk with me. When I return I plug the EHD back in and power up my mac. This time I've received an error message telling me that no more backups are possible because the disk is read only. I have tried ejecting the disk and reconnecting, to no avail.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks
Paul
iMac 21.5″, macOS 13.2
Yes. The same thing happened to me two days ago - read-only and Time Machine could not backup. Could not find a way to change Read Only to Read & Write.
Did a bit of research and noted that OS Venture requires an APFS formatted Time Machine disk. Interesting as I'd upgraded to Venture just after it was released - a few weeks/months ago. But, Time Machine did not notice until two days ago that my Time Machine backup was formatted with the old Mac OS Extended format? In any event, used Disk Utility to check the backup disk and it passed multiple times. Disk Utility could also not reformat the disk. So, in frustration, deleted the backup disk in Time Machine preferences. Then, was able to reformat the disk to APFS and started a new Time Machine backup. Seems to work and as my backup is an older HD, not SSD, have changed backup timing to daily from hourly.
Seems I needlessly lost a few years of backups because of the change. Apple should address this problem & develop a needed fix so past backups can be saved when upgrading to Ventura...
How did the EHD travel?
Did the EHD get connect to another computer?
What does Disk Utility say about the Map Scheme and Format?
What is the Bits Volume used for?
It is best to use the whole drive for Time Machine and then a second drive for other storage volumes.
Go to View and select Show All Devices. Then select the External Drive, the Bits volume, the Backup volume, take a screenshot of each and post all three screenshots.
Tip: use Command Shift 4 and take a close-up of just the Disk Utility panels instead of the whole desktop. see > Take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support
Awesome, it was hard to tell if Bits and Backup were different volumes on the same drive or different drives.
What happens when you run First Aid on the Backup volume?
Yup' it's borked!
Disconnect that EHD and set it aside.
Start new Time Machine backups on a new EHD.
Then go back and see if you can Repair, Erase and Reformat the old EHD.
Hi den.thed, thanks for the quick response.
The EHD was in our clothes bag all the time, which travelled by car. No airports or scanning equipment and no connections to any other devices. I don't know much about 'Map scheme and Format', but is this any good?
Cheers, Paul
Hiya,
I have two EHDs; one is for Time Machine, the other (Bits) for manual backups. I'm a writer and extremely paranoid, I've got my work backed up all over the place!
I've attached four backups for each part of 'external'.I had to manually crop full screenshots because when I used your method the screenshot would appear on the desktop for a couple of seconds and then disappear. I hope these are OK.
Paul
Seven years is a good run.
If you are really concerned about backup, buy two EHD's. Then use one EHD for Time Machine and the other EHD for a weekly CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper clone.
You're welcome. I'm glad to have been able to help.
Dennis
Oops. Is the EHD knackered?
Well, it is over seven years old. I'll need to buy one which'll take a couple of days.
Thanks for all your help, I've learnt a bit too.
Paul
Good point and thank you. But Apple should have warned us this could/would happen when upgrading to Venture.
Time machine backup failing - read only disk
